


SENATOR CAECUS: The Blind Senator

by hoc_voluerunt



Series: SPQR [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Ancient Greece & Rome, Alternate Universe - Ancient Rome, Alternate Universe - Historical, Ancient Rome, Case Fic, Class Differences, Episode: s01e02 The Blind Banker, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-23
Updated: 2013-11-23
Packaged: 2018-01-02 06:10:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1053422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hoc_voluerunt/pseuds/hoc_voluerunt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An old senatorial friend of Celatus' comes to them for help identifying how a stranger got into his house and scrawled yellow paint across his atrium. But when one of his slaves is found dead, the trail leads further and further east, through slavers and smugglers and foreign trade -- perhaps as far as Seres itself.</p><p>(ancient Rome!AU of 'The Blind Banker')</p>
            </blockquote>





	SENATOR CAECUS: The Blind Senator

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Verecunda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Verecunda/gifts).



> Latin translations in mouseover text, or in [this post](http://hoc-voluerunt.livejournal.com/39859.html).

            If Vannus were perfectly honest with himself, it wasn’t much of a surprise to find Celatus in his room, two weeks after he’d moved into the flat on the via Pistoris, with his great, patrician nose buried in the trunk at the foot of Vannus’ bed. With a tense mouth and tensing shoulders, he stood in the doorway and crossed his arms.

            “What are you doing?” he snapped. “I realise that two weeks is an impressive show of self-control for you, but –”

            “I observed your belongings when you moved in,” Celatus cut him off in and absent tone, pre-occupied with Vannus’ things, “but between your movements and our argument, I didn’t have much time to inspect the lower contents of this trunk. Why exactly do you still have this?” he added, and held up a neatly-folded, dull-red tunic. Vannus’ face soured further: his lips flattened into a thin line, then pushed forward, pursing in a show of infinite, furious patience.

            “That was at the bottom, Celatus,” he growled. “Shouldn’t you have gotten distracted by the armour, first?”

            “You underestimate how long I’ve been in here,” was Celatus’ curt reply, followed immediately by “Why have you kept a ratty old thing like this? Clearly part of your military uniform, but you never wear it anymore. Why keep it?” An eyebrow rose in knowing amusement. “No, let me guess – _sentiment?”_ He said the word like it was something laughable, pathetic, and Vannus’ lips pursed further.

            “I _paid_ for it.”

            Celatus looked unconvinced. “Really? That’s all?” He turned back to the tunic, unfolding it and inspecting the collar. “Because the sizeable hole in the left shoulder would indicate to me that it has more meaning than just –”

            “Get out.” Vannus was suddenly snarling, his fists clenched at his sides. Celatus glanced up, almost alarmed.

            “There’s no need to shout, Piso, I was merely observing –”

_“Get. Out.”_

            Scowling, Celatus slithered to his feet and stalked from the room, tossing the tunic at Vannus as he passed. “You can’t keep running from it forever, you know,” he threw over his shoulder as he turned into his own room. “I’ll figure you out eventually, I always do!”

            Celatus’ door slammed, and Vannus did not reply. His fingers tightened on the coarse, red cloth in his hands; red like a Lacedaemon’s cloak, red like ochre and dust and sacrifice. Red like the blood that had poured from him as he begged the Furies to _let me live,_ the stain now brown on the cloth. This was not for Celatus to inspect. This was not for him to deduce and unpick like a dead man’s wounds, like his tan, his unreliable limp. He should have known that. He should have _known._

            Vannus sighed.

            Of course, Vannus was to be quick in learning that nothing was ever so simple when living with Celatus.

 

            Celatus had been silent and contemplative all morning, so his eventual statement as Vannus returned with food for the week came as a surprise.

            “I need to go to the forum.”

            “What?” Vannus looked up from where he was setting down packages of meat and a basket of vegetables on the table. “I was just down there, you should have said something!”

            For a moment, Celatus stared at him from his chair near the hearth – then he rolled his eyes, and his hands fell from their prayer-like position before his lips.

            “I need to go to the _senate house,”_ he clarified. Vannus deflated.

            “Oh. _That_ forum.”

            In a sudden flurry of movement, Celatus was on his feet, and somehow throwing an immaculate toga over his shoulder and making it look like it had been done by a troupe of slaves.

            “Are you coming?” he snapped at Vannus, who looked up from the food, startled.

            “What?”

            Celatus looked at him with impatience and paced from the room; abandoning rough papers, meats and cleaver, Vannus hastened to follow.

 

            Sabinus – the man whom Celatus, it appeared, had been arranged to meet – was an aedile, the purple border of his toga worn far too smugly. He had the dusky skin and strong features of Spain, and met them on the steps of the curia with the downward smile of a beneficent, hateful spirit.

            “Cornelius Celatus,” he said, in a sneering, over-familiar tone. Celatus’ reply was forcibly bright.

            “Sabinus!”

            Celatus stepped up to meet him, and they clasped hands and kissed cheeks, Sabinus still one step above Celatus and three above Vannus.

            “How long has it been since I last saw you,” Sabinus continued, in that same cheerful, slimy tone, “eight years?” His eyes slid across and down to land on Vannus, who felt his spine stiffen on instinct.

 _“ Meus sodalis,” _was Celatus’ forceful introduction: “Caelius Piso.”

            But Vannus knew better than that a senator like Sabinus would be fooled. The man had taken one look at Vannus’ tunic and peeling boots, and his mind had jumped from ‘friend’ to ‘favoured prostitute’ in a manner Vannus found chillingly familiar.

 _“ Collega,” _he corrected, stepping up and holding out a hand for Sabinus to shake – and to Tartarus with Celatus’ moue of displeasure.

 

            They walked in the Julian basilica, sun and shadow slanting between them through the archways as they talked. Sabinus dismissed his slave and set the pace, with his steady, laden steps, into which Celatus fell with annoying ease. A step behind them, Vannus marched, with hands clasped behind his back and head bent forward to hear. The aimless chatter of the pleasantries faded into business as they moved out from the forum and passed near the via Sacra to the slopes of the Palatine, with its houses grand and crowds and temples strong.

            “Our house here has been in the family for generations,” Sabinus explained, as they made their way between wide buildings. “There’s a shrine to our ancestors in the atrium – someone broke in, late last night.”

            “What did they steal?” asked Vannus, and was graced with a condescending smile.

            “Nothing,” said Sabinus, smug. “They just left us a little message.”

            There were guards at the door, within and without, and slaves and servants milled about in the corridor and around the shaded edges of the atrium. At the back of the space, around the central pool and the intricate statuettes and flowers that flanked it, and on either side of the door to Sabinus’ primary meeting room, were situated two deep alcoves filled to the brim with evidence of stateliness. Busts and death masks were stacked in niches in the walls, and, in pride of place, stood two grand, painted statues of old Roman men, one with a hand raised in oratorical expertise and the other bedecked in military garb, high-shouldered and proud. As the three of them approached the alcoves, however, something else became visible in the shrines. In bright yellow paint, splashed across the busts and mud-coloured walls around the niches, were, on the one side, a sharp, horizontal dash, and on the other, five vertical slashes of colour.

            The first yellow dash cut across the eyes of the oratorial statue like a blindfold on the dead man.

            “I have paid guards on the doors night and day,” explained Sabinus, watching Celatus watch the painted figures. “After dark, there is always at least one member of my household here, and when the slaves are at rest, another guard patrols the atrium and the back corridor of the house.”

            “The guards saw nothing last night,” Celatus concluded in a cold voice, with his eyes still on the markings on the marble and wall.

            Sabinus had clearly entered business-mode. “There’s a hole in our security,” he declared. “Find it, and I’ll pay you. _Well._ Here’s an advance –” He held out a hand, and a slave was at the ready to deposit a small leather purse there which clinked in Sabinus’ palm. “Tell me how he got in, and there’s a bigger one on its way.”

            Celatus turned in place, a slow rotation on the balls of his feet, and looked at Sabinus with a gaze of steel. “I don’t need an incentive,” he intoned – _“Sabinus.”_

            He averted his gaze in a clear dismissal, and strode with slow purpose back to the front of the house, leaving Vannus to eye the little purse in Sabinus’ hand and wonder for how long it would feed them.

            “He’s joking,” he said with haste, “obviously. Shall I take that for him?”

            Sabinus smiled like grease, and dropped the purse into Vannus’ hands. As he walked away, the Briton opened up the modest bag and peeked inside.

            It was teeming with _aurei_.

            Vannus tried to control the hitch in his breath as he hurried after Celatus: he had never seen such a sum in his life. On the other side of the pool, Celatus had waited for him, and they fell into step. Just before they left the atrium, however, Celatus looked up with only his eyes at the square of cold grey sky visible between the roofs of the house. He then cast his eyes down to catch Vannus’, and said, in a conspiratorial undertone:

_“A hole.”_

 

            Out on the street, Celatus’ shoulders dropped and pushed forward as he increased his pace and struck out his long legs against the road.

            “Are you telling me he came in through the roof?” Vannus hissed, trotting after him down the hill.

            “Easiest way in, if you know how to climb,” said Celatus, eager and smug.

            “But there’s a guard on duty there, he _said.”_

            “A guard on duty, yes,” Celatus repeated, then added – “in the atrium _and_ back corridor.” He smirked down at Vannus, still half a pace behind. “Not to mention that the day a hired guard refuses a good bribe will be the day the Tiber flows backward.”

            Vannus’ brow quirked in agreement, but it was accompanied by a shrug. “Sabinus looks like the kind of man who can afford to pay his guards well,” he said. “Well enough to outweigh even a very good bribe.”

            “We shall see,” Celatus smiled.

            Vannus eyed him with suspicion and amusement, and let him have his moment of mystery before interrupting.

            “So, what does it mean?”

            Celatus shot him a glance with brow raised. “I should’ve thought that was obvious.”

            Vannus glowered.

            “That paint was meant for someone to see,” Celatus explained, with an air of infinite patience which Vannus thought was a bit hypocritical, at this stage.

            “Presumably, Sabinus,” he tried, but was cut off.

 _“Wrong._ Despite his pretensions, Quintus’ family has only been established for two generations. An attack against his reputation would be easy, and _public,_ but this was private – inside his home, at the back of the atrium, not immediately visible to guests or clients.”

            “A private threat, then?” said Vannus. “Blackmail, or a warning.”

            Celatus smiled approvingly. “A warning, yes,” he drawled – “but not for Sabinus.”

            They rounded a corner, as if to turn back their path, and Vannus shot Celatus a furrowed glance as he filed after him into a narrower road. _“Not_ for Sabinus?” he repeated. “Then for whom?”

            “Sabinus is a senator,” said Celatus, launching into a delighted, narrative tone. “He rises with the dawn, attends to his household, greets his clients, and makes his way to the senate house.”

            Vannus made a face. “And?”

            Celatus slowed and stopped in his tracks, and turned to arch a long look at Vannus over his shoulder. “He’s not the first to rise in his house.”

            He set off again, and Vannus spared the time to frown to one side, then jogged to catch up.

            “You’re saying the message was for one of his _slaves?”_ he demanded, incredulous. “What good would that do?”

            “We’ll figure that out when we find out which slave.”

            A moment later, Celatus was ducking into an even smaller side-alley which ended in a high, abrupt wall a few strides in, and contained one door, sunk low into the left-hand wall.

            “Where are we?” Vannus asked, as Celatus adjusted his toga for maximum elegance.

            “The back entrance to Sabinus’ house,” he replied, as he pulling back his shoulders and raised his nose even higher in the air. “We’re going to find out whom that message was for.”

            He jutted up his chin, but as he raised a fist to knock imperiously at the door, Vannus’ hand shot out, and held back his wrist in a grip of bronze.

            “What are you doing?” he snapped.

            Celatus’ lip curled. _“Acquiring information.”_

            “From Sabinus’ slaves,” Vannus added. “Without Sabinus. You think they’ll cooperate when you approach them like that?”

            “I’m _nobilis, ” _Celatus spat, “they’ll do as I say.”

            “Yes, they’ll do as much you say,” Vannus agreed – “and _only_ so much.”

            “And since when have you been an expert on slave etiquette?” Celatus’ eyes flashed like iron. “I thought you were freeborn.”

            Vannus wrenched at his wrist, forcing him away from the door and behind him in the alley. _“I am,”_ he said, in a tone which would stand no insult. “But I know plebeian ways better than you, as sure as Jupiter’s strikes. And my father was a _freedman._ Do you really think I’ve never interacted with slaves as anything but a master?”

            “Do you really think the same of me?” Celatus countered, but received only a scoff in return.

 _“Please,”_ Vannus drawled. “You can’t even talk to _me_ without showing your distaste.”

            Celatus held his gaze – grey to storm-blue – for a moment, before he relented, with a superior sniff and a twist of his arm to free his wrist. “Go on, then,” he goaded. “Show me what _plebeian ways_ you’ve mastered.”

            Vannus glared one final time, and turned to the door, rapping his knuckles against the wood with a lowered crown. After a few moments, a pale, harried face appeared: an older woman who tugged open the door and stared out with obvious relief.

            “Oh, thank Mercury for his swiftness,” she sighed, catching sight of Vannus. “Are you here for the body?”

            “Body?” Vannus repeated with a frown, echoed with greater interest by Celatus behind him.

_“Body?”_

            “Poor thing, we don’t know what’s happened,” the woman was continuing. “But you’re from the – _doctor’s,_ aren’t you?”

            Vannus’ voice was kind and confused as he spoke. “No, we aren’t whom you sent for,” he said, “but I think we can help. We’re already trying to solve one mystery in this household, this might be related.”

            “Can you tell us what _happened?”_ Celatus added insistently from over Vannus’ shoulder. The woman at the door eyed him suspiciously for a moment, but stepped back and pulled the door further to let them in.

            “We found him this morning,” she said, in a low voice, leading them through a compact warren of rooms, half-buried beneath the level of the street. Every few steps they had to plaster themselves to the walls to let someone pass. “He cleans the atrium every morning, before the master wakes – just sweeps down the floors, you understand, then goes to wake the men in charge of the fires. They came to me this morning, complaining that they hadn’t been woken when needed. I found the atrium still littered, and when I went to find Edonus, well...” She pushed open a door on their right, and revealed a tiny room lit by a single lantern, containing a thin mattress and a bucket in the corner, and a young man lying face-up on the pallet, his big, dark eyes still open and a deep wound in his lower chest. There was a knife in his right hand, which lay limp at his side. The woman stepped aside to let the two men in, and they stood in the doorway with faces blank and shoulders slack.

            “He saw the paint,” said Vannus, without having bothered to phrase it like a question. “Came back here, and...”

            Celatus did not look at him when he replied. “The warning was for him,” he said. “This wasn’t a suicide – this was murder.”

            Vannus’ gaze shot up to stare at his companion. _“Murder?”_ he repeated. “Why would someone go to all this trouble to murder a slave?”

            “That’s exactly the question,” Celatus muttered as he turned on his heel to face the woman who’d let them in. “Who was he?” he demanded. “That boy, that slave, where was he from? When did he join the household?”

            “Hang on,” Vannus interrupted, “how do you _know_ it was murder? The knife’s right there in his hand, what if he saw the paint and decided to take the noble way –”

            Celatus rolled his eyes in an extravagant gesture of aristocratic impatience. “The placement of his few effects and the patterns of wear on his hands indicate that he was _left-hand-dominant,”_ Celatus insisted, shifting on his feet. “Not to mention that the angle of the wound is all wrong for a self-inflicted stab, and it’s too clean for that short, blunt thing. Minerva knows what he was planning to do with only that for a defence, but there’s no doubt that the killer used their own weapon, then disguised the murder as a suicide. _Obvious.”_

            “Obvious,” Vannus repeated, incredulous, but Celatus ignored him in favour of the slave woman.

            “When and from where was this boy bought?” he repeated.

            “I don’t know,” the woman sighed, “perhaps – six months ago? No more than that, and it was certainly before September last year, I remember, he helped with –”

            “Yes, good, fine,” Celatus intoned, “and _where?”_

            “Meminius,” said the woman with a faint, worried frown in her brow, “in the subura. He sells slaves at a cheap price – no questions asked about where they’re going; or where they’re from.”

            Celatus’ eyes flashed in the shadows. “Thank you,” he muttered, his mind clearly elsewhere, and turned, pushing Vannus before him towards the door by which they’d entered. As they reached it, Celatus stopped his friend with a brief touch on his arm and a firm address: _“Piso.”_

            Vannus turned, two steps above him and with one hand on the jamb.

            “You go to the subura,” Celatus continued in an undertone. “Try to find this Meminius, discover what you can about the boy Edonus and where he came from.”

            “And you?” Vannus asked.

            “I’ll stay here,” said Celatus, “see what I can get from the rest of the household. We’ll meet again this evening, at the via Pistoris. There _must_ be a system behind this, some kind of reasoning.”

            “About why Edonus was killed?”

            “Why he was killed, why the paint, why the staging?” Celatus’ whisper was low and strained. _“Why?”_ He looked up at Vannus, and his expression was earnest and keen. “Find out _everything_ that you can,” he said. “I need something to work with, I need _information!”_

            Vannus nodded. “I’ll do what I can,” he said, as he turned again to the light and threw back a quick “Good luck,” entering again the cramped light of the alley.

 

            The subura was cramped, crowded, noisy, dark, and smelled of the unwashed bodies of men and beasts. The buildings were tall, upper storeys of ramshackle wood tottering over the narrow streets and throwing their creaking shadows over those below. One house echoed with the screams of an arguing couple, while families on the lower levels shouted up for peace; another was a blackened, barren waste, whose fingers of destruction stretched out to scratch at the surrounding buildings and still smelled faintly of smoke. Vannus moved through the people with ease, avoiding eye contact with some and smiling politely at others, and as he walked, exchanging the occasional word and handshake and a question of where to find some slave traders, he wondered how Celatus would have done this: whether he would have held his nose in the air and pushed with patrician impunity through the crowds, or might have had the sense to keep his face down and treat the surrounding masses as actual people.

            Somehow, Vannus doubted it would have been the latter.

            He went to the usual markets, and asked around in the usual places. He stopped for a lunch of meat and bread at a street-side vendor, and asked again where he might find a man called Meminius. He was directed to a particularly seedy-looking insula, where he found a dyer’s, two rooms for rent, and a man in the courtyard with a cup of wine, a scroll full of numbers, and an unconcerned expression on his black and handsome face. He looked Vannus up and down without judgement as he approached, and when asked about a young Thracian man he may have sold to a senatorial family six months before, he replied with a shrug and vague explanation.

            “Six months ago?” he’d said. “Six months and Thracian...” He’d screwed up his nose and looked to the heavens for assistance. “Ah – that would probably have been the lot from Tabetha, she brings them in from the east every so often. Got a new group near the end of June, I remember, sold them off in a couple of months. But the Thracian boy, he sounds familiar. Big eyes, right?” He gestured with flaring fingers by his face, and grinned. “How is he?”

            Vannus’ expression did not change.

            “Dead.”

 

            Meminius directed Vannus to Tabetha, a trader in cheap cloth from the eastern provinces. She was taller than Vannus by more than a head, and glared down her nose with eyes like a vulture’s.

            “June?” she’d argued. “Why do you want to know about June?”

            “You provided a group of slaves around that time to the trader Meminius –”

            “Is that a crime?” Tabetha snapped; Vannus forced himself to remain calm.

            “I only ask because a – friend of mine may have known one of the slaves, a young Thracian boy, in his twenties at most.” Tabetha’s expression remained unimpressed, and Vannus licked his lips and ploughed on. “I only wonder where you got him so we can determine if he really was my friend’s acquaintance.”

 _“Was,”_ Tabetha repeated with a sneer – “is he dead or something?”

            Vannus’ mouth tightened; he was getting sick of giving this kind of news.

            In the end, Tabetha relented with an almighty sigh and an impatient glance toward the front of her shop. She told Vannus of a trip to Moesia the year before, and the slavers she’d worked with. Apparently, she had regular contact every year or so with a man named Iunus, who worked with traders from the east. He provided cheap slaves to bring back to Rome along with her usual bolts of cloth and foreign trinkets, whom she gave to Meminius to sell for a cut of the profits.

            Edonus, it seemed, had been one of the last to sell, and had protested to the last that he was freeborn and innocent.

            “He probably owed someone money,” Tabetha shrugged, off-hand. “Worried about what they’d do to his family when he disappeared from the province without paying. But such is life.”

            “Is there any chance this Iunus fellow might be in Rome?” Vannus asked, with a silent prayer to Apollo. Tabetha let out an irritated scoff.

            “No, but I’ll tell you who you can find,” she snarled – “go talk to Basmath and her friends in the butcher’s, up by the Viminal. Oh, they have _all_ the gossip from the east, I can tell you, she and her Asian friends. Go talk to her.”

 

            “Right,” Vannus muttered to himself as he left the building and turned northwest. “So he was sold by Meminius around August, sold to _him_ by Tabetha in June...” He shouldered past a man leading a horse. “Sold to her by Iunus in Moesia, and before that captured in Thrace – _probably_ – by Iunus – or someone else?” He peered up at the buildings in the glow of the late afternoon sun which slipped between the dense buildings. “If Basmath knows something, she could tell us who caught him, or who to contact to find out – _oof!”_

            A tall, lanky figure collided with him from behind, but when he turned to berate the stranger, he was met with a pair of gleaming eyes and Celatus’ long fingers fluttering about in excess.

            “Edonus had a habit of running off during errands,” he started babbling, not even taking the time to show recognition. “He came to the subura to talk to fellows from Thrace, Moesia, Bithynia, as far east as Syria –”

            “Celatus –”

            “Another of Quintus’ slaves told me they used to go together when they could –”

_“Celatus –”_

            “He wouldn’t tell me the name, but there’s a group that meet near the Viminal, we need to find a miller or a baker, possibly a butcher, he wasn’t clear, who –”

            Vannus pointed up the road to where a young man was feeding offal to a few dogs, and said: “That butcher’s, under a woman named Basmath.”

            Celatus stared at him, suddenly silenced. He looked taken aback. “How do you know?”

            Vannus sighed, with a quick roll of his eyes. “I found Meminius and followed the trail of Edonus’ sale to a woman named Tabetha. She bought him from a man called Iunus, in Moesia, said any news from the east would be best found at Basmath and her company in the butchershop.”

            Celatus was still staring. Vannus fought the urge to roll his eyes again.

             _" Age, _let’s see what we can find.”

 

            The butchershop smelt of guts, and melting meat, but Celatus strode in with head held high, and toga immaculate. Vannus actually shook his head in disappointment.

            “I really can’t take you anywhere, can I?” he muttered, and Celatus stopped and turned to frown at him.

            “I beg your pardon?”

            “We’re in the _subura,_ Celatus,” Vannus sighed. “Your high manners won’t get us anywhere.”

            Leaving the patrician behind, Vannus strode forward to the counter at the back of the small room, where the young man from outside was now scratching numbers onto papyrus in the feeble light from the street.

            “Excuse me,” said Vannus in a low voice, “we’re looking for a woman called Basmath. We were told we might find her here.”

            The young man’s dark face raised to peer at him, suspicion prickling in his gaze at Vannus’ light eyes and blonde hair; he relaxed by a small amount when Celatus stepped into view.

            “What do you want with her?” asked the man.

            When he spoke, Celatus’ voice was uncharacteristically sympathetic. “My name is Cornelius Celatus, this is my associate Caelius Piso,” he said in a low voice. “We have news about a friend of hers – a Thracian boy, known as Edonus. I’m afraid it’s... bad news.”

            The young man’s suspicion was draining away in the face of their sincerity, and he straightened, dropping his pen. “I’ll see if I can find her,” he muttered, and disappeared out a back door which led, Vannus guessed, either out into the courtyard or further into the building. With the man having departed, Celatus’ shoulders rose incrementally in the restrained excitement of the chase, and he turned to pace the shop, counters and shelves littered with prices, chicken feet, and the occasional pig’s hoof. Vannus stayed at the counter to take in the shop’s apparatus: a rack of knives along the back wall, pots for money, a half-finished meal; the papers the young man had been working on. It seemed he’d been translating or converting sums: Vannus recognised the Roman numerals set out in columns, under more unfamiliar writings which –

            Vannus frowned at the papyrus; then his eyes widened.

            “Celatus,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady. “Come look at this.”

            Celatus crossed the shop again on bored and restless feet to look over Vannus’ shoulder. A breath rushed through his nose in realisation, and his back stiffened. “Yes, I see it,” he muttered.

            Groups of straight lines, alternating horizontal and vertical, underscored by the Latin translations: _numbers._

            “Exactly the same as the paint as Sabinus’,” said Vannus. _“ Per Iovem, _we’ve got it.”

            “Not by god...” Celatus muttered – then the young man reappeared, and Celatus’ iron eyes shot up to him.

            “She’s waiting in the courtyard,” said the man, beckoning them over. “She wants to see you.”

 

            In stark opposition to what Tabetha had implied, Basmath turned out to be a woman nearing forty, with the smooth, curved features of beyond Parthia and dark skin which spoke of Indian origins. Her hands were calloused and her face weathered, but layered within her hardiness was a thread of earnest concern. Her first words to Vannus and Celatus were a harsh and worried demand:

            “You have bad news about Edonus.”

            “He was found dead in his master’s house this morning,” said Celatus. Basmath’s expression flickered with shock and grief, but it was soon smoothed over again with solemn resignation.

            “I should have known this would happen,” she said in a sad and quiet voice – Celatus immediately latched onto the sentence, his swift feet darting him forward in an aborted leap towards her in the little courtyard.

            “You knew him, then?” he said, and his voice nearly shook with the effort of his restraint. “You know why he was killed?”

            Basmath took a breath and held it, staring up at Celatus’ face; then she released the breath in a long sigh which tugged down her shoulders and chin. “Come inside,” she said. “There’s a lot to tell.”

 

            ‘Inside’ turned out to be Basmath’s private apartment at the back of the building on the ground floor, where the ceiling shuddered occasionally with the feet of tenants above, and the wine was cheap and unmixed.

            “I organise a small community of eastern immigrants,” she explained while she poured out three cups of wine and Celatus’ nose wrinkled at the unmannerly offer. “We run our messages and operations through the butchershop on the street, but we usually meet in the courtyard here. Once a week at least.” She sat heavily across from them at a table, her seat more like a curule chair than the mere stools Vannus and Celatus had been left with. “Edonus came to us first a few months ago – said he’d heard about us through his fellow slaves on the Palatine.”

            “Did he tell you where he was from?” Vannus asked, trying to keep his voice more compassionate than Celatus’. “How he came to be brought to Rome and sold by Meminius?”

            Basmath nodded, but only once, and the movement tilted to one side. “In a way,” she said, haltingly. “He was never entirely frank, but the pieces I put together...”

            Celatus was practically shivering on his stool. “What did you discern, Basmath?” he demanded, his fingers white against his rough wooden cup and his wine undrunk. “What did he tell you?”

            Basmath looked at them both, her gaze lingering on them each in turn, before she sighed again and placed her cup on the table. She leaned forward on her forearms, and where her hands rested atop one another, they loosely, if firmly, clenched.

            “He was a trader,” she said, and kept her eyes alternately on each of the two men before her. “Of a very specific kind.”

            “An illegal one,” Celatus finished for her.

            “Stolen jewels from India,” Basmath said, her posture relaxing, “silks from even further east. Relics from Parthia, Arabia, Egypt, Gaetulia, _Gaul_ _._ He was from Thrace originally, but he travelled far, even as a child, it seemed. Stolen goods. Stolen people. I suppose it was really inevitable that he fall prey to the same kind of smugglers.”

            “Smugglers...” Celatus repeated, in an undertone that Vannus was quickly recognising as one of inspiration.

            “Only by land?” Vannus asked, in an attempt to keep the conversation going as Celatus looked down and away, his steely eyes darting back and forth, following nothing.

            “As far as I know,” Basmath shrugged. “He occasionally expressed an aversion to boats.”

            “And you think this is why he was killed?”

            She released a long and terrible sigh. “From what I heard,” she said with measured care, “they were very dangerous folk. Didn’t let anyone out of their circle for long.”

            All of a sudden, Celatus was on his feet and leaning over the table to grab at a wax tablet sitting at Basmath’s elbow.

            “These numbers are used in your _butchershop,”_ he said, as he pressed hastily away with the stylus. “Can you tell us where they’re from? What they mean?”

            Basmath looked at the tablet as Celatus turned it back towards her, then met Celatus’ eye with neutrality.

            “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

            Celatus’ fists clenched, and a noise escaped his throat, as of a cut-off cry. “Basmath,” he growled, dropping all pretence of civility, “I don’t care what illegal trade you’re running out of this shop. Minerva knows your ‘community’ would be able to furnish you with all kinds of goods and services. All I am interested in is solving the murder of the slave Edonus. Now tell me, _what does this mean?”_

            Basmath sighed, and looked down at the imprints in the wax. “It’s an eastern form of writing numbers,” she said, and Celatus looked like he could have strangled her.

            “Yes, I _know_ that much,” he cried, “where is it _from, exactly?”_

            Basmath’s hackles were rising, but she answered nonetheless. “Seres.”

            Vannus’ brow rose in surprise, but neither of his companions made any recognition of his presence.

            “And these numbers, these _exact_ numbers, what are they?” Celatus continued. “What do they mean?”

            Basmath glanced again at the markings Celatus had made in the wax, to which he was pointing frantically with the stylus. “Fifteen,” she sighed. “It’s a number fifteen.”

 

_“Fifteen!”_

            Celatus was hurrying down the darkening streets on too-swift feet, so fast that Vannus had to jog just to keep pace with his long limbs.

            “The number fifteen got Edonus killed?”

            “He was a smuggler,” said Celatus, as if that explained everything in one, magnificent swoop. He met Vannus’ gaze, and his grey eyes shone with excitement. “Captured and sold into slavery, then six months later, a foreign number fifteen appears in the household and Edonus is found dead.” His voice was all but quivering with restraint. “What could it _possibly_ mean?”

            Vannus stared at his glittering, flashing eyes. “Surely people from so far away would have little investment in one smuggler from Thrace.”

            “Perhaps not, but Edonus worked with people from all over the world. Seres is no more outlandish than Germania or Africa, and if his usual companions picked up the system from trading with others, they might have adopted it as a form of communication, a kind of code...” Celatus’ smile was like that of a cat particularly satisfied with its kill.

            Vannus finished the thought out loud

            “He was being threatened.”

            Celatus’ smile became a fantastic grin, and his pace picked up as they wound their way through the subura and away from the Viminal. “A code buried in eastern numerals, which ended an ex-smuggler and slave’s life.”

            Vannus snorted. “You’d think it to be easier just to kill the man,” he grumbled, “instead of playing around with eastern numbers and paint.”

            Celatus looked at him like he’d insulted the court. “The message is what elevates the murder,” he said, in clipped and superior tones. “Was it a threat? A warning of some kind?”

            “Both?” Vannus offered absently, with his eyes on the crowd; but Celatus stopped in his tracks, and Vannus was three steps ahead before he realised and turned to face him. The reddened winter sun was leaving its last, dying rays in the sky, and they were squeezed between a brothel and two men dragging a pig’s carcass up through the gutter – and Celatus’ face, bathed in the scattered shadows of the subura, was slack with inspiration.

            “The numbers were a warning,” he repeated. “A warning from his old smuggling friends.”

            Vannus glanced to one side and back. “And?”

            Celatus’ grey eyes lit up in the dark. “What if Edonus stole something?”

            “How can you steal a stolen good?” asked Vannus with a frown, but Celatus overrode him.

            “What if he took something he wasn’t meant to take, then disappeared – captured by slavers, and whisked away to Rome?”

            Vannus’ frown had turned to one of contemplation to match Celatus’ spirited thoughts. “The smugglers tracked him down over the last few months…” he started.

            “And when they found him,” Celatus finished for him, “they left the message in Sabinus’ house, where Edonus would be the first to see it. He rushes back to his room, and finds the murderer already there.”

            “They demand whatever he stole back –”

            Celatus’ face fell.

            “Perhaps he’d gotten rid of it,” he shrugged, “and they killed him for that. Perhaps he handed it over, and was still murdered for his efforts.”

            Vannus frowned even further. He looked up at Celatus. “What if he never had it in the first place?”

            Celatus’ brow quirked down at him. “What?”

            “What if he never had it in the first place?” Vannus repeated. “Denied any knowledge of the stolen goods, so they killed him, thinking he was being stubborn?”

            “The smugglers would go to the next likely person to have any knowledge of the goods,” Celatus said, his words speeding up and his eyes flashing. Vannus, without thinking, took two steps closer to Celatus, worry and excitement widening his eyes.

            “We need to find out if there are anymore of Edonus’ old gang in the city,” he said sternly. “If Edonus didn’t deliver, if this wasn’t some one-off accident or personal vendetta –”

            “It wouldn’t be,” Celatus babbled, “the numbers, the _code,_ it all points to a system –”

 _“Someone else could be in danger,”_ Vannus finished.

            “We need to find out all we can about Edonus’ smugglers,” Celatus ordered. “See if we can’t find more evidence of the painted code.”

            “You have your urchins,” said Vannus. “We can use your family’s slaves, ask Hirtia to borrow hers.”

            “You go back to Basmath’s,” Celatus added. “Tell her more of her friends could be in danger, we need to know of _anyone_ else who might have been involved with Edonus’ smugglers.”

            “She won’t be happy to talk --”

 _“Lives_ could be at stake, Piso!” Celatus cried, already pushing past him to fly down the street. “Go back, scour the subura,” he shouted over his shoulder. “We need to settle this before anyone else gets killed!”

 

            It took them days, and all of Celatus’ resources, but they were determined to find the same patterns of paint and trade. Vannus followed up leads from Basmath, searching out people from Thrace, Asia, Syria and Egypt, citizens and recent immigrants, traders and travellers and scant contacts with the eastern provinces and lands outside the empire – anyone who might know of the gang with which Edonus had worked, and by whom he’d been murdered. Sometimes he had only a name or a pseudonym to work with, sometimes an address or a common haunt. In total, he found two possible contacts, out of over two dozen names Basmath or others had given him.

            Celatus, meanwhile, was organising the search from the via Pistoris. His paid urchins ran back and forth, in and out of the courtyard at CCXXI to dispense information and receive an ass or two for their troubles. Hirtia had lent a slave to them, and Celatus had even deigned to take one of his family’s slaves from his brother’s household to help in the search. In two days, he’d ruled out whole sections of the city; but there were still five hills left to cover, and every passing hour was the mounting possibility of someone’s life at stake. Through the Palatine to the Caelian and through the valleys up to the Aventine, Celatus’ urchins snuck in as errand-boys, messengers, and playing children, checking walls and rooms for distinctive yellow paint. With Hirtia left in charge, Celatus would go out and ask among senators and equestrians, rich merchantmen and their slaves; he even got Laevinus to help, with a few of his men in tow.

            On the third day, Celatus sent a message by his family slave, a woman who spent two hours wandering the fora between the Palatine and Capitoline before she found Vannus talking to a senator from Bithynia who had once traded with Edonus’ gang.

 _“ Dominus _says,” she panted at his shoulder, “that he’s found another victim.”

            Vannus was back on the via Pistoris on winged heels.

 

            “Baebius Lucanus.”

            Celatus stood in the middle of the main room of their apartment, his toga discarded on the couch and a death mask in his white and fragile hands. He turned, belatedly, to face Vannus – who still breathed heavily in the doorway – and held up the mask: it was of a older, round-faced man, with small eyes and a wide nose.

            “One of my urchins heard gossip about his death yesterday evening,” Celatus explained as Vannus entered the room, staring at the mask in his friend’s hand. “She snuck into the household. Apparently, Baebius’ family is from east of Parthia. _Apparently –”_ here he raised one significant eyebrow – “he bought his way into equestrian status at the end of last year.”

            Vannus looked up from the mask to Celatus’ more lively face. “Money from illegal goods?”

            “According to the gossip, everyone was very confused as to whence it came.”

            “And the paint?” Vannus asked. “Was there any paint?”

            Celatus’ teeth glinted along with his eyes as his lip rose in a smirk. “The same pattern,” he said: “the number fifteen, in those tallied numerals, on the side wall of the atrium.”

            “It _was_ a threat.”

            “They appeared, apparently, two days ago,” said Celatus, dropping the mask onto the couch and turning to lift a crate of papers onto the desk. “It seems our murderers give heed to status – they gave the slave only a matter of hours.”

            Vannus stepped further into the room, and frowned at the crate. “What’s this?”

            “Every papyrus, scroll, tablet and codex I could procure from Baebius’ house,” said Celatus. “I promised them they would help me find the man’s murderer.”

            “And how did he die?” Vannus asked, now standing perpendicular to Celatus across the crate. “In the same way as Edonus?”

            “Knife through the heart,” Celatus smiled. “Though not, this time, staged as a suicide.”

            “They’ve killed twice now,” Vannus said, in a grave voice to complement Celatus’ excitement. “They’re definitely dangerous.”

            Celatus smirked at him. _“ Age _then, we’d better get a move on.”

            Vannus peered up at him with suspicious, narrowed eyes. “Doing what, exactly?”

            “Baebius, according to his household and friends,” Celatus said, launching into a too-familiar explanatory tone, “was a notoriously forgetful man. He trusted his slaves and book-keepers with his monetary affairs, wrote everything down, had reminders everywhere. If such a man were to work with a gang of smugglers who used a secret code based off an obscure and foreign number system, what do you think he might do to discover the meaning of any message he might find?”

            Vannus could not have torn his eyes from Celatus’ if he’d tried. His voice was faint and dumbfounded as he said: “He’d write it down.”

            Celatus smiled at him, and looked again to the crate. Vannus followed his gaze, and let out a measured breath.

            “How many crates are there?”

            “Four,” said Celatus, neutral and unrevealing. Vannus sighed properly, and bent over the table to begin.

 

            Scroll after scroll.

            Sheet after sheet.

            Tablet after codex after hastily-scrawled note.

            Until finally –

_– finally –_

            – as the sun sank its rays through the meagre windows and into the main room at CCXXIB –

            – Celatus let out a hoarse cry of triumph.

 

            Vannus’ eyes ached from lack of sleep, and from peering at documents and cramped ink letters in the light of a single candle. His throat burned with dust and shame, his unwillingness to admit to Celatus that he couldn’t even read; that he was only looking for the recognisable, deadly symbols. He knew his numbers, and he wasn’t stupid – but the messages, the documents, the treatises and poetry in Latin and Greek, were beyond him, and it was a relief to hear Celatus shout “I’ve found it!” and know that he no longer had to scour pages and pages of unknowable script.

            Breathing hard, Celatus gripped a protesting Vannus by the arm of his tunic and dragged him over to the nearest window, one loose sheet of paper in his hand. “It was rolled into a scroll of Cicero,” he said, through his triumphant, almost animal grin. “Different number combinations mean different things – you see here?” He pointed to the first row, scratched vertical and horizontal tallies followed by brief Latin words. “‘Twenty-three, sixty’ means ‘contact us’. And here –” two lines down – “Three ones mean a successful transaction, three twos a failure. No doubt these marks are made where the intended recipient would see them, blending in with the usual graffiti on the streets. It’s _genius!_ And look here, down the bottom –”

            Vannus, leaning over his arm in the slim, weak ray of sunlight, saw the same tallies that stood for ‘fifteen’. He could not read the decoding.

 _“Dead man,_ Piso!” Celatus finally translated for him, a frustrated strain in his voice, as if he’d expected Vannus to finish his thought. “The messages left for Edonus, and for Baebius, they _were_ threats – warnings that they’d be dead men if they didn’t cooperate.”

            “Clearly they didn’t,” said Vannus having stepped back, now, from Celatus’ growing excitement.

            “Or they _couldn’t,”_ Celatus finished for him. “If something was stolen from the goods for sale, something important, it may not even have been them. But their deaths will be a warning to others, before the gang even reaches them. Perhaps they’re closing their net until the real culprit reveals himself.”

            Vannus’ face fell. “So even more people could die,” he concluded. Celatus met his eye, and though the quirk of his brow looked something like concern, the rise at the corner of his mouth was nothing but sheer enthusiasm.

            “We’d best keep looking, then.”

 

            Vannus picked up where he’d left off near the subura, retracing old leads from Basmath and keeping his eyes always open for yellow tallied paint. He went more logically this time, and extended his search in carefully-mapped quadrants up onto the Viminal and Quirinal hills, scouring the ridges and the valley in between. He walked through the entire day, then, too exhausted to return to the via Pistoris, kept going through the night, taking a torch from the wall of a well-kept insula and raising it to the plaster and brick, the wood, the stone, of every building he passed. There were plenty of crude drawings on the walls, dark daubs of names and dates, gang signatures, political comments and professions of sexual prowess; but not a single yellow tally came to his light. At the end of the night, as the sun crept its way towards the horizon, Vannus finally gave in, having covered all the ground that he could, and turned his nose back south to the Aventine. In the grey light of the early dawn, with the horizon yellowing, Vannus made his way past the Caelian, as the streets began to be populated and exhaustion passed over him, until he nearly fell on his weak and painful feet. He peeled off his _caligae , _and staggered to the nearest public fountain for a drink. He rinsed his hands first, and then his face, then cupped his hands to fill them and drain them, then fill again, then drain them yet again.

            “You look awful.”

            Vannus, with mud and dust caked up to his ankles and his well-worn boots on the ground beside him, looked up at a pale-skinned young woman with brown hair pinned up in a tangled lump at the back of her head. She held a bucket on her hip, and another rested at her feet.

            Vannus blinked.

            “Can I help you?”

            The woman laughed at him, kind and condescending, and bent to fill the first bucket at the fountain. “I might ask the same question of you,” she said, glancing at him askance. “You look like you’ve walked to Hades and back.”

            “Oh,” Vannus remarked, with a stunning lack of eloquence, and looked back at his near-black heels. “I’ve, uh – been looking for something…”

            The woman frowned at him, and in it Vannus saw her kindness drain away into serious concern.

            “How long have you been awake?” she asked, exchanging her full bucket for the empty one. Vannus looked at her with a measure of surprise.

            “About, um –” he calculated, slowly, in his head. “Two nights and days?” With the utterance, the full impact of his exhaustion hit him, and he leaned forward to rest his head upon crossed arms on the lip of the fountain, sighing “Oh, _Mithras...”_

            The woman knelt suddenly next to him, one hand coming to rest on the centre of his back and the other pressing against the skin of his forehead.

            “And you’ve been walking all that time?” she asked, incredulous. Vannus tried to respond in the negative, but she overrode him. “Look, I run a small doctor’s business a few streets from here,” she said. “Let me take you back there, give you some proper food and a good drink – you’re risking fever staying out these two nights like this!”

            “I have a cloak,” Vannus muttered, tugging at the garment around his shoulders. The woman just tutted at him, and sighed.

            “Get up,” she ordered. “I’m taking you to the shop, you need to eat, and _rest.”_

            Vannus found himself, to his surprise, very unwilling to resist; and so he stood, plucking up his boots along the way, and staggered after the woman as she carried two full buckets and led the way.

            “You’re not from Italy,” Vannus said, in an attempt to make conversation. The woman smiled at him.

            “Neither are you.”

            “British parents,” Vannus replied. She was quick and smiling to respond.

            “Gallic ancestors,” she said. “Though my family’s lived in Rome for three generations, so we’ve some odd parents in the mix.” She grinned at him, and his heart lightened with the regularity, the company, and the comfort.

            “I’m Caelius Piso,” he said, with an aborted hand held out to shake.

            “Seia,” she replied. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Piso, frightful though you are.”

 

            “So – you’re a doctor?” Vannus asked, over a cup of heavily-diluted wine and an enormous chunk of old bread.

            “Inasmuch as I use whatever I’ve learned through _long_ experience to help the people around me,” said Seia, “yes.” She was sweeping in and out of the courtyard where she’d left him, readying her shop for the business of the day. “Why, are you going to tell me I’m cheating innocent citizens out of their money with cheap tricks and poisons?”

            Vannus smirked back, and said: “I’d have to see how you run the shop before I could judge that.”

            She grinned at the challenge, and motioned for him to stand. _“ Age,” _she said, “I’ll show you around.”

            The shop was well-lit even this early in the day, with candles in every corner and a wide window counter opening onto the street.  Neatly-arranged bundles of herbs hung from the ceiling, and bottles of mixtures and poultices were laid out on the counters and shelves behind, and, in one corner, there was a long, low table with a sheet on top, for patients.

            “I have cures for stomach complaints, headaches, bodily strains,” Seia explained, pointing out each collection of products, labelled and organised. “Soothing treatments for pregnancy, laxatives, abortion options. My parents used to run their own business – my mother was an experienced midwife, and my father a civilian surgeon. They taught me everything I know, and I can set a bone or diagnose illness or injury just as well as I can help a woman give birth.”

            Vannus was duly impressed, taking in the surroundings with an enthusiasm for healing which he hadn’t felt in many months; not since the Jewish revolt had begun, at least.

            “The only problem is,” Seia continued, “I don’t have any surgical experience. My father let me watch and assist with treating open wounds – bandages, cleaning, fighting infections, the like – but because I was a girl, he never taught me how to handle a knife, and I’ve found that perhaps the hardest area in which to train oneself.” She sighed, and her mouth was tight. “There’s too much risk involved with live patients, and dead bodies are hardly good examples of how best not to hurt someone too much.”

            Surely, Vannus thought, this could be nothing but a gift from the gods. He smiled to himself, sent a silent prayer of thanks to Jupiter, Juno, Minerva, and every healing deity he could think of from Aesculapius to Apollo to Febris.

            “I could help.”

            Seia gave him a look of infinite scepticism, fixing back the shutters of the front window.

            “No, I mean it,” Vannus added with a laugh. “I was surgeon to the Fifteenth Apollonian for nearly ten years, and I haven’t got any work to speak of now. If I got a cut of the pay, I’d be more than willing to perform surgeries, or help with injured clients.”

            He doubted Seia’s face could bear an expression of any more gratitude.

 _“ Per Bonam Deam,”_ she sighed, “you truly are a godsend.”

 

            While Seia plied him with carefully-chosen morsels of food and a comfortable chair, they negotiated for Vannus’ job. He could come in two or three days a week, and be ready to assist when called on for surgeries, unless what he was doing was absolutely vital. They decided on a two-week trial period so Seia could ascertain Vannus’ level of expertise and knowledge; if he passed, he’d gain an income – ninety percent of the fee from patients in need of surgery, and seventy-five if it was something Seia could do, like splinting or wrapping. She was still in charge of all female patients except in emergencies, and would send word to him through her slave when she had need of him.

            Vannus emerged from her shop with smile, a job, and renewed energy for the day ahead of him.

 

            He left the Caelian just before noon, and ate a lunch of bread and meat at a roadside vendor, still in the shadow of the Palatine Hill. There had been no word from Celatus since they’d parted the day before; though whether this was due to a lack of news or a messenger’s inability to find him, Vannus couldn’t know. He ate steadily, and found another fountain to drink from, as he contemplated his next move.

            Between their dual searches over the preceding week, they must surely have covered the entire city. Vannus knew Celatus’ urchins and contacts had already gone over the Palatine, but he was unsure whether they’d searched the Capitol. In any case, he imagined, it couldn’t hurt to search again; and so he decided, after his meal, to pass through the forum, at least, before heading back to the Aventine and the via Pistoris.

            He was glad that he did.

            There, on the back corner of the temple of Concordia, was a wide swathe of yellow paint in intricate, littered dashes, tallies and scratches far more extensive than the simple threats at Sabinus and Baebius’ houses, and built up and out so much that Vannus had to take three steps back to be able to take it all in. He stared for a long, lonely moment, as the business of the forum chattered away so near to him and echoed back into the alley in which he stood.

_ Debet Celatus cognoscere._

 

            “Celatus?”

            Vannus thundered up the staircase at CCXXIB, his legs frustrated from being caught up in crowds on the way there.

            “Celatus, are you there?”

            The main room of their apartment was empty but for the scattered scrolls and papyrus from Baebius’ house. Panting just a little bit, Vannus checked Celatus’ bedroom, then his own, then hurried back down the stairs to find Hirtia in her own apartment.

            “Hirtia,” he called, “have you seen Celatus today?”

            In her own main room, Hirtia lifted her head from where she’d been inspecting the scattered papers and accounts on a table with a slave. “Oh Piso, where have you been?”

            “Searching the city, for Celatus’ case,” he answered quickly, “do you know where he is?”

            “I think I heard him leave this morning,” said Hirtia, frowning at her slave for confirmation. He shrugged, and her mouth tightened. “He was muttering all night about leads and clues, and someone from east of the empire? I don’t know, but he sounded quite frustrated with it.”

            Vannus sighed, and momentarily buried his face in his hands. “Did he say where he was going,” he asked again, desperate – “anything, anything at all that might help me find him? It’s important, _urgent.”_

            Hirtia looked at him with sympathetic fruitlessness. “I may have heard him talking about the subura last night,” she said, in careful tones – “but that was only my overhearing him, and Jupiter knows if that had anything to do with this morning.”

            Vannus scrubbed his hands through his hair, pursing his lips and squeezing his eyes shut just for a moment. He came to his decision without delay.

            “That’ll have to do.” He turned on his heel, and threw a farewell over his shoulder as he left. “Thank you, Hirtia – and _vale! ”_

            “Good luck, dear!” she called after him, not sounding optimistic.

 

            Vannus ran almost all the way back past the Caelian and into the valley of the subura, the ridges of the hills seeming higher and higher above as the sun sank and their shadows grew. He went back to Basmath’s butchershop to ask after Celatus: apparently, he had been there just that morning, asking about a young woman from the far east named Soo Lin Yao. Basmath couldn’t say where Celatus might have gone to find her; she herself had never heard of the woman.

            And so, again, Vannus found himself scouring the subura. He squeezed through the narrow, crowded streets, passed between brothels and filthy shops, and over-populated insulae with heads hanging out of every window and arguments filtering from courtyards. Dirt-smeared children raced past his ankles, with harried mothers and scolding fathers far behind, and every other street-level doorway contained a beggar or a peddler of cheap wares. But Vannus had only two names on his lips: “Soo Lin? A woman named Soo Lin Yao?”; and “Cornelius, Cornelius Celatus, a tall man, _nobilis, _ with dark hair and grey eyes. Have you seen him?” As a general rule, the people around him were either reluctant or unhelpful (and often both); but he asked, repeated, begged for information, and after threats and propositions and near-assaults, he finally had some sense of direction. One person had seen Celatus wandering around at noon; another knew the woman Soo Lin, and thought she might live somewhere out near the Esquiline.

            Vannus’ feet turned east, and his heart felt like it beat in his throat.

            He made sure to scour every street, and duck his head in every alleyway he passed. He asked after Soo Lin, and even called Celatus’ name when no one would talk to him. Slowly, eventually, a few more people remembered seeing one or the other, until finally a short, dark woman in the doorway of a brothel peered at him with the dark eyes full of the suspicion of the poor, and said:

            “You want to find Soo Lin?”

            “Yes,” Vannus sighed, “yes, my friend went to find her, we think she might be in danger. I have news for them...”

            A young, Greek-looking man with short, curly hair poked his head from the nearest window. “She’s gone missing,” he called, earnest and afraid. “I used to try to talk to her, she lived up near Cuprius, but I haven’t seen her for a week. I hope she’s okay.”

            Vannus’ eyes and heart swelled with hope. “Via Cuprius?” he repeated.

            “Yes, but as I said, she’s gone missing,” said the man. “Do you think you can find her?”

            Vannus’ legs were already moving. “We’ll do our best,” he called as he left. “Thank you, _thank you!”_

            The via Cuprius was barely two blocks away, and Vannus was there in minutes. He looked in every door and window, checked every courtyard, and shouldered through the crowds, calling Celatus’ name. Halfway down the street, there came a commotion a few houses down: a door burst open, someone was shouting and gasping, and to the alarm of the people (and one donkey) bustling past, a figure fell through the entryway of an insula and dropped to its hands and knees. Vannus’ stomach dropped.

_“Celatus!”_

            He pushed and shoved and ran forwards and across the street, crouched next to Celatus’ crumpled form and grabbed at his arms. Celatus was gasping for breath, his eyes were glassy and unfocused, his body limp; and there was a broad, red welt around his neck, as impressed by a rope or twisted cloth.

            Someone had tried to strangle him.

            “Celatus, what happened?” Vannus demanded, propping him up on his knees even as the man began to gain his strength and struggle out of Vannus’ care. He paid no heed to the patrician’s hoarse protestations, and pushed his chin out of the way to inspect the injury. Again, he asked: “What _happened?”_

            “Soo Lin –” Celatus croaked, swatting feebly at Vannus’ hands.

            “I know, you went looking for her.” Vannus pressed at Celatus’ neck with his fingers, checking for internal damage. Celatus swiped again at his arms, harder this time.

            “I followed what leads I could find from Edonus and Baebius’ gang,” he said, “they led me to her. She’s from Seres, Piso – _Seres._ Few enough people from that far away live in the city, she had to be linked – get _off!”_

            Vannus snatched away his hands with a scowl, and Celatus heaved himself to his feet with the aid of the wall behind him. Vannus stood, too, but kept one eye and ear on Celatus’ neck and breathing.

            “She’s gone missing,” he said, to add to Celatus’ tale. “Do you know where?”

            “There are signs of someone else in her rooms,” said Celatus. His breath still heaved a little, and his voice was still coarse. “Not just a squatter, someone went through her things, they were _looking_ for her. Came in through the window. She left just in time.”

            “You think she’s – gone into hiding?”

            Celatus nodded, and swallowed. “We have to find her.” He stalked away down the street, heedless of Vannus, who now called out, and ran to catch up. He snatched the back of Celatus’ tunic above his toga, and pulled him to a halt.

            “Listen, I found something earlier today, you’ll want to know –”

            “Yes, I’m sure it’s fascinating,” Celatus snapped, walking on, “but an assassin just sent me a very stern warning, and Soo Lin Yao may be in danger, there are more important things to be worried about right –”

            Vannus shoved one shoulder and one foot in Celatus’ way, and blocked him off with a glower. “I found another of those messages,” he said, in a voice low and strong and forbidding argument. “The eastern numbers, the _code.”_

            “Another threat?” said Celatus, as a small crease appeared between his brows. “Where? For whom?”

            Vannus shook his head. “Not a threat,” he said. “At least, not like the last ones. It was big, bigger than before, lots of numbers – _different.”_

            Celatus’ eyes grew wide and bright, and he darted forward to grip Vannus’ shoulders. _“Where?”_

            “At the forum, of all places,” Vannus said. “Behind the temple of Concordia. In public, Celatus, not someone’s home, I think it might have been a message –”

            “There’s no time to go back,” Celatus muttered, looking away for a moment until his iron eyes met Vannus’ again. “I need you to remember,” he said hurriedly, _“remember_ those numbers, what they looked like, can you remember?”

            Vannus frowned at him. “Yes, of course, I –”

            “Because the human memory is faulty, it’s untrustworthy,” Celatus kept talking, his words growing stronger, louder, faster, “can you _remember_ the numbers, all of them?”

            “Yes,” Vannus repeated, growing frustrated, “yes, I remember them!”

            Celatus’ hands were tight and close on Vannus’ arms, and the doctor had to lean back from where Celatus was throwing his face forward in his enthusiasm. “Are you _sure?”_ he said, condescending and in need, and Vannus twitched his shoulders and stepped back with enough force to dislodge Celatus’ grip.

            “Yes!” he shouted. “If you’d just – let me –”

            Celatus’ attempt to follow was aborted as Vannus twisted around and reached under his cloak for the back of his belt, where his sheathed dagger was nestled. He pulled the dagger out with care, and followed this by extracting from the leather sheath a scrap of papyrus, folded over and over to fit without being conspicuous. He handed the paper to Celatus, breathing hard and with a tight mouth, and replaced his dagger as Celatus unfolded the scrap to reveal a muddle of smudged, wobbly, but legible numbers, inscribed in charcoal on the grimy paper.

            “I wrote them down.” Vannus sighed, and took another few steps back from Celatus’ still-looming form. “Mithras and Mars, Celatus, don’t _do that...”_

            “Do what?” Celatus asked, though his voice was distracted and distant as he took in the numbers, eyes flashing back and forth between each symbol. Vannus stopped, half-turned away, and stared at him over his shoulder.

            “Don’t just _grab me_ and start demanding things, Celatus,” he said, in no uncertain terms. “No matter it’s rude as a praetorian in a brothel, I nearly _stabbed_ you! Mithras, Celatus, _think_ before you –”

            “One of these wasn’t on Baebius’ list.”

            Vannus’ shoulders fell, and he brought his hand up to cover his eyes. “Celatus –”

            “‘Bad deal’,” Celatus translated from the sheet; “‘bad’ – I assume this combination means ‘bad _dealer’_ , or _member_ ; ‘missing’ or ‘lost’ – ‘artefact’, lost artefact; ‘meeting’; and – this. It’s – three-hundred and ninety-one. What does it _mean?”_

            “Three ninety-one?” Vannus repeated, his face creasing as he turned fully back to Celatus. “Three ninety-one...”

            “It’s not in Baebius’ code,” Celatus was muttering, “did he not know? Was it too important, too secret to write down, was it –” He began to pace, looking again and again at the scrap of paper Vannus had handed him as Vannus watched, dumbstruck, from the side, and people walked straight past them, heedless and unbothered by the two strange men and their conundrum.

            “Perhaps it stands for something,” Celatus said to himself, “a place, a street name, a street _number,_ a – place on a map or a number of paces -- but from _what?_ A year, a date, a festival? No, what festival would be called by a number? Is it –”

_“ Ab urbe condita.”_

            Vannus’ mouth had gone slack and wide as the words left his throat hardly with his knowledge, like divine inspiration. He looked up at Celatus, who had spun on his heel to stare.

_“ Ab urbe condita!”_

            “It’s a _year,”_ Celatus cried.

            “Three-ninety-one,” said Vannus. “Marcus Curtius sacrifices himself for Rome.”

            Celatus finished the thought. “Throws himself into the Lacus Curtius.”

            “The Lacus Curtius,” Vannus repeated, frowning. “What does that mean, then?”

            “Lacus Curtius,” Celatus repeated under his breath, his long fingers steepling before his mouth with the slip of papyrus still between his palms. “Lacus Curtius, Lacus Curt—” He looked up, and caught Vannus’ gaze, and gasped, with eyes huge and mouth wide. _“Oh,”_ he breathed. “Holes,” he said. “Underground, spaces underground.”

            Vannus shrugged with his mouth. “Cellars, tunnels,” he began, “sewers –”

 _“ The Cloaca Maxima, _Piso,” Celatus finished with a grin. “They meet in the _cloacae_ , _underground!”_

            Vannus’ frown only deepened. “But what are they _looking_ for?” he asked, which stopped Celatus in his restless tracks. His eyes darted again, to and fro, and he looked again at the paper in his hand.

            “There’s no doubt now that someone stole something,” he said. “Bad dealer…” He seemed to come to some decision, then, and the paper snapped shut in his fist. “We need to find Soo Lin Yao,” he snapped. “She’s running from them, she must know something.”

            “And where can we find _her?”_ said Vannus. “If she’s not at home, if she’s hiding –”

            “Underground,” Celatus muttered, and smiled. “She knows where they meet, knows where to avoid, and needs to stay unseen: _she’s in the sewers, too.”_

 

            The sun having descended, they found a torch each, one bought (by Vannus) and one stolen from a back-alley wall (Celatus). The nearest branch of the sewers to Soo-Lin’s insula was streets away, and too cramped to crawl through; but Celatus, it appeared, had an encyclopaedic knowledge of the tunnels under Rome, and he took them on a winding journey through the streets as he muttered twists and turns and placements of openings, and how much longer it would be until the tunnels were large enough to warrant searching for Soo Lin Yao.

            “Far enough away from the Cloaca Maxima to remain safe,” he said, more to himself than to Vannus, “but still underground, still close to the familiar and friendly…”

            They descended, then, nearer the Palatine, till ankle-deep in foul-smelling water and bent at the back to save their skulls. Their torches glimmered off the murky backwash around their feet and the slime streaked down brick walls. Rats scampered and squeaked in the dark, and in niches, ragged urchins and poor, emaciated men lay curled, with or without small bundles of belongings or food. Every so often, a path lay dry, or a tunnel branched off, full of rubbish and mould and putrid scents. Steps or ladders leading up to the street were weak with rust and sewage, and slippery plants, and grates in the gutters let weak fingers of moonlight into the sewers. Vannus and Celatus reached their torches into niches and side-tunnels, and threw shuddering shadows off the bricks, bodies, flotsam and jetsam residing there; until Vannus’ weak flames illuminated a young woman, dirty, but not poor, not native to the sewers, with black hair and pale limbs, and high cheekbones cresting eyes grown wide with terror.

            “Soo Lin Yao,” said Celatus, and her face fell.

            “I told him,” she cried, “I don’t know where it is, I _don’t know!”_

            Vannus raised his torch higher and crouched down, and held out his free hand in supplication. “No, no,” he said, “we’re not from the gang. We won’t hurt you.”

            “Then who are you?” she growled, and unfolded her limbs where she sat, to confront or to flee.

            “My name is Cornelius Celatus,” said the detective, kneeling beside his friend. “This is Caelius Piso, my colleague. We’re investigating the death of the slave Edonus.”

            Soo Lin frowned at them, her hands curling into fists. “What do you want with me?” she demanded. “Have you any idea of the danger you’re putting me in? If they find me again, they’ll kill me for sure!”

            “Your gang of smugglers,” said Celatus, “they use a code, yes? Based on a numeral system from Seres, like you.”

            The woman’s mouth was tense, and she said nothing.

            “Please, you have to help us,” Vannus implored. “Two men are dead already, and if we don’t find the smugglers, more could die. _You_ could die.”

            Soo Lin watched them for a moment, but then she uncurled further, and turned to face them head-on.

            “What do you want to know?”

            Celatus breathed a careful sigh of relief, and the two men knelt with her, knees dampening, and set their torches by.

            “Three hundred and ninety-one,” Celatus began. “In the code. It means the Cloaca Maxima, correct?”

            She nodded. “According to the year of the Lacus Curtius,” she said. “It means –”

            “Underground,” Celatus finished, “yes. Do you know where they meet? Where exactly?”

            Soo Lin met his eye. “Near the opening into the Tiber.”

            Celatus gave a calm façade, but Vannus could see in his tightening mouth and measured breaths his frustration.

            “Do you know what they’re looking for?” Celatus asked. “Do you know where it is?”

            “If I knew where it was, don’t you think I would have brought it to them?” Soo Lin asked, with narrowing eyes. “I don’t care for those trinkets, I know people have died. I know how ruthless they can be!”

            Celatus frowned. “More than national sympathy links them to you,” he said, half-statement, half-guess.

            Soo Lin’s sigh was all sorrow. “When I was fourteen, my parents both died. My brother and I – we lived on the streets, back home, we stole what we could to keep us alive. We knew about gangs like that, of course we did. It got to the point… they were the only option we had.”

            “The trade routes brought you to Rome,” Celatus offered. Soo Lin nodded, and when she spoke again, her voice was thick with pained tears.

            “They taught us Latin and Greek, so we could work with ease in the empire. The money was good, the travel exciting. But their leader, General Shan…”

            “General Shan?” Vannus repeated. Soo Lin met his eye.

            “Smugglers can be petty,” she said, and her tone spoke only of harsh lessons, violently learnt. “General Shan does not offer mercy when they disobey.”

            “And now something’s been stolen,” said Celatus. “And the gang will kill every suspect until it’s retrieved.”

            Soo Lin nodded. “A hairpin,” she said. “Made of jade. A rare antique.”

            “Do you know who took it?”

            “I haven’t worked for them in years,” she shrugged. “I tried to leave that life behind, start up a new life in Rome, but – they never really let you leave…” She sighed, long and hollow, as her dark eyes fell closed. “Three days ago, I was attacked. My own brother climbed into my rooms, and threatened me for information I couldn’t give. I retreated wither I could for safety. Nowhere in Rome seemed safe, except…”

            “Except the one place they wouldn’t look.”

            Soo Lin met Celatus’ eye.

            “Don’t risk engaging them in a fight, Cornelius Celatus,” she said. “They are ruthless. If they think you know something, or pose a threat, there is no length to which they will not go to get what they want.”

 

            Soo Lin dismissed them with sternness and fear, and begged them not to come near her again, not for as long as they pursued the gang. Celatus and Vannus let her be, and once again set off into the sewers; not to chase a witness this time, but to find a gang of killers.

 

            Vannus came at them from the Cloaca Maxima, while Celatus went over ground, through the forum and towards the Tiber to where the sewer met the river. The tunnels were darker with only one torch, and Vannus checked every side-entrance, street-entrance, every niche, nook and cranny he could find, going slowly through the mud and muck. But the tunnel was wider here, and high enough in places for Vannus to stand straight, and his meagre firelight could not penetrate every shadow.

            He was just beginning to hear voices, and see light up ahead, when someone struck him a blow from behind, and he staggered. The torch hit the water, extinguishing light, and a moment later, a second splash proclaimed Vannus unconscious.

 

            When he came to, Vannus felt a moment of bliss: the blackness being overcome by warm light, ignorance of all things, comfort in sheer inaction, like waking up the day after the finale of a battle, when there was no more fighting or desperate surgery to be done.

            Then the pain in his head kicked in, and his eyes slammed shut again as a gasp and groan escaped his throat.

            “Ah,” said a voice nearby, feminine and cruel – “I’m glad to see you awake.”

            Vannus prised open his eyes, fighting the pain. He was tied to a chair with complicated knots, legs constrained and wrists bound together between his knees, the sewer illuminated by an iron brazier at either side of the tunnel. There was blood caked in rivulets down the side of his face, and before him stood a woman, in a heavy black stola and cloak, with the same black hair and high cheeks as Soo Lin Yao, but in a rounder, crueller face. Sewer-water still flowed over Vannus’ toes, and behind him he could sense the presence of two burly men – guards, he thought; assassins, he hoped not.

            “I am Shan,” said the woman, harsh and to the point; ruthless, as Soo Lin had said. Vannus held back a dejected sigh.

            “Where is it?” Shan asked, and Vannus frowned, looking up at her.

            “… What?”

 _“The treasure,”_ Shan growled, “the stolen hairpin. You’ve been looking for it, we know you have – _where is it?”_

            “I don’t know,” Vannus breathed. He could feel his lungs starting to struggle, as if under a great weight, but there was nothing there – nothing but the ropes on his wrists and a murderous gang leader demanding information he couldn’t give. General Shan drew a knife from the belt at her waist, and Vannus hissed and pulled back, struggling against his bonds, as she placed the pointed tip under his jaw and asked again:

_“Where is it?”_

            “I don’t –” Vannus gasped, “I don’t know, we didn’t find it –”

            “Then perhaps we should ask your friend!” Shan cried, morbidly delighted. “I’m sure the sight of your mangled corpse will incite him to be more talkative than you.”

            Vannus flinched and stared at her, with curses slipping from his tongue between ragged breaths, and knew that she would not hesitate to do as she said.

            “We don’t know,” he said again, “I’m telling you, we never found it. We were looking for killers and ciphers, not treas— _ah!”_

            He cried out and twitched against the ropes as Shan sliced deftly at his neck – not deep enough to threaten his life, but enough to sting and hurt, and slowly stain his tunic collar with blood.

            “Everything in your empire has its price,” she hissed. “And the price for your life is _information.”_

            “Please,” Vannus snarled, in an attempt to contain his voice, “we haven’t _found_ the pin, you have to believe me – we weren’t looking for –”

            Casual, unalarmed, General Shan sank the tip of her knife into the flesh of Vannus’ right arm – just a fraction, but enough to make him gasp with the pain.

_“Please!”_

            “There is one way to end this,” Shan smiled, “and it requires you to do more than beg.”

            “I don’t know where it is,” Vannus cried, “I don’t know!”

            But Shan only leaned closer, and gripped Vannus right shoulder while she pressed the edge of her knife – _Mithras and Mars!_ – to his back, just below where the Jewish arrow had left its mark.

_“Where is the stolen pin?”_

            Her face was close to Vannus’, and she could hear his panting pleas; but still she drew back her arm and sliced deep, through Vannus’ tunic and skin and taught muscle, until he shouted out loud.

            “We didn’t find where it is!” he cried; but Shan’s only reaction was to tighten the fingers on Vannus’ shoulder and snap:

            “I don’t believe you!”

            “You should, you know.”

            Vannus’ eyes flew open at the sound of that voice – that infuriating, absurd, noble voice – and he saw over Shan’s shoulder, in the feeble light at the end of the tunnel, the silhouette of a man – Celatus – in a tunic and belt, running towards them. He lashed out with one foot, just as Shan stood and pulled back from Vannus, and upended one of the braziers, which collapsed with a loud, bubbling _hiss_ into the water. Half the tunnel was plunged into darkness, and Vannus breathed an enormous, frustrated sigh of relief – until the moment Shan motioned to her two men to go after Celatus while she stepped deftly behind Vannus and held the knife to his throat.

            “Sorry about the wait, Piso,” Celatus called from somewhere in the shadows. “I got a little distracted on my way here.”

            Vannus let out a mirthless, desperate laugh. “You could have saved me a blood-letting,” he replied over a gasp. The knife was pressed closer to his throat.

            “So you are the other Roman,” Shan called. “You’ve been looking for something that belongs to us.”

            There was a loud sloshing of water up ahead, and a flurry of shadows – followed by a loud _clunk_ , as of lead piping striking flesh and bone. One body splashed to the ground.

            “I don’t think so,” Celatus cried. “Not unless you own the life of Soo Lin Yao’s brother – killer of Edonus and Baebius Lucanus, am I right? Your little assassin?”

            “I will kill him!” Shan replied, heedless of Celatus’ informal tone. She held the knife so that she again cut the skin of Vannus’ neck, and he let an aborted cry escape his throat.

            “Celatus, for Jupiter’s sake –” he shouted. “I wouldn’t say she’s bluffing, if that’s what you think!”

            Again, Celatus struck out from the shadows like a snake, leaping forward and upending the second brazier. Darkness fell upon them – but as it did, Vannus saw, from the corner of his eye, Shan take a small throwing knife from her belt, and aim for where Celatus must be. With a silent prayer to Mars, Vannus took advantage of her distraction and threw his head back into her stomach and ribs. The throwing knife flew wide, and clattered harmlessly against the wall, and while her grip on her other dagger was weakened, Vannus mustered all his strength and threw himself forward, dragging the chair to which his was tied with him into the murky water. He kept his head from striking the bricks too hard and blinked droplets from his eyes. All he saw, however, was the dark shadow of General Shan’s back, fleeing into the tunnels on splashing feet.

            One bodyguard still remained, Vannus remembered, and he stared again into the shadows toward the entrance onto the Tiber, where a splashing and gasping could be heard, as of a struggle. Celatus’ voice called out, hoarse and – by the sound of it – restricted by a henchman’s hands.

            “Piso –” he was gasping, as his feet flailed in the shallow water and sent waves across the tunnel. Vannus pulled and pulled at the ropes on his wrists, struggled as hard as he could, used every trick the army had taught, while the shadows coalesced into two distinct forms, one on its knee with arms stretched down, the other subdued and weakening.

_“Piso –”_

            Finally – _finally –_ Vannus freed his right hand, and threw it out beside him under the water, praying to Jupiter, Mars, Cloacina, and _Mithras, Mithras, please –_

            The handle of a small throwing knife met his palm.

            He lay on his right side, without the leverage for a proper throw – but Vannus threw every caution to the winds, mustered his strength and canny aim, and flicked the knife toward the higher dark form.

            It landed with a heavy _thump_ in the side of the man’s neck. He let out a splutter and groan familiar to every soldier, and collapsed to one side with a splash. There was a moment – just a second – of heady, terrifying silence before Celatus gasped and let out a long, excruciating breath which clawed at his throat and came out in a cough and a painful wheeze. He rolled onto his side, struggled up onto one hand and, coughing and gasping, pushed himself to his hands and knees, shoulders hunched and lungs working strong.

            Vannus’ head fell back into the water, and he sighed in relief.

            “Piso?” Celatus called. His voice was coarse, and his throat abused, and his coughed and swallowed and tried again – _“Piso?”_

            “Over here,” Vannus called from the shadows. He was still panting, lying now on his right arm, and the ropes on his legs and wrist and waist felt as tight as ever – perhaps tighter. “Celatus –”

            “Hold on,” Celatus gasped. “One of the men had your belt, your dagger should be –” He rose to his feet, a hulking mass of shadow in the dark tunnel, and staggered through the water to where Shan had stood. He bent, and his hands sloshed through the water and muck until they came up with worn leather and a familiar hilt.

            “Celatus...” Vannus pulled at his restraints again, and felt a tightness deep in his chest as his wounds twisted and strained. But his breathing was slowing, now, and Celatus was falling to his knees by his chair, close enough that Vannus could see the exhaustion and lingering fear on his carved features.

            “It’s all right now,” he was panting, whether to himself or Vannus, it wasn’t clear. He took Vannus’ dagger in hand, and sawed at the ropes, until they loosened and fell, and Vannus felt he could move and breathe again. “It’s over, it’s all right…”

            Vannus’ feet and legs came free, and the rope around his waist dropped away. Finally, he felt the bonds on his left wrist snap, and he pulled his spine straight and rolled away from the collapsed chair. Celatus followed on his knees, with Vannus’ belt and dagger in his hands. There was mud and muck all along his back and sides, through his hair, and dripping down his cheeks. Vannus, in turn, felt soaked to the bone, the mud and slime on his skin chilling him, like fear, to his heart.

            “Piso,” Celatus said. In the darkness, his skin was ghostly pale, and his silver eyes flashed in the feeble remnants of moonlight that reached them. Vannus pushed up into a sitting position, and, with steady hands, took back his belt and knife.

            “You might have come sooner,” he quipped, and sheathed the knife, but still held the belt slack in his fingers. Celatus’ brow furrowed down at him, before he sighed, and laughed, and drew himself up to his feet.

            “We should probably go,” he said, looking out to the light – fainter, Vannus thought, with oncoming dawn – at the end of the sewer tunnel. Vannus pushed himself up, and hissed as his shoulder and arm twinged.

            “Let’s get back to the via Pistoris,” he sighed. “I have some patching-up to do.”

 

            “How’s your throat?” Vannus asked, as the sun pushed grey dawn over Rome and they walked back to XXCCIB.

            “Two strangulations in one day?” Celatus replied, his voice still somewhat hoarse. “It could be better.”

            “I’ll have a look once I’ve stitched myself up,” said Vannus. He looked up at the lightening sky, and winced as his shoulder-wound pulled. “Might need your help with the one on my back.”

            Celatus stared at him. “I’ve never held a needle in my _life,”_ he snapped, as if the very thought were a form of sacrilege. Vannus laughed.

            “All right, fine,” he said. “About time Seia learned to suture a wound anyway.”

            “Seia?”

            Vannus grinned at the empty street. “Oh yes, I didn’t get to tell you…”

 

            With wounds bandaged and bruised necks tended, they ate honeyed oats in the front room of CCXXIB, and Vannus tried to push back his growing fatigue.

            “Did you figure it out, then?” he asked, and kept his voice quiet in the hush of good company and good grace, even while the morning crowd chattered away on the street. “Who stole the jade pin?”

            Celatus sent him a patronising look. “I can’t say for certain,” he said, sly and almost coy; “but I suspect if Sabinus inspected his slave’s quarters, he might find a young woman who was enamoured of a Thracian and now unknowingly possesses enough to buy her way to freedom.”

            Vannus smiled, and huffed a laugh through his nose.

            “That is usually the way of it,” he sighed. Celatus’ nose wrinkled at the sentiment, but he said nothing. Vannus watched him, and his mirth failed; for there was a downturn to Celatus’ mouth which spoke nothing of disgust at lovers.

            “You mind,” Vannus said – “don’t you?”

            Celatus caught his eye.

            “We can’t catch every criminal in the empire, Piso,” he said, affecting lightness and sitting back in his chair. “Another one slipped through our fingers; but the gang wouldn’t have gone away, even if we’d caught her. I’m sure they stretch far further than you and I could have managed.”

            Vannus heaved a long, weary sigh. “Well,” he said. “Maybe we’ll run into _General Shan_ again sometime.”

            “You can requite her for scratching your neck,” Celatus quipped. They both smiled into their oats, and silently agreed to talk of it no more.

**Author's Note:**

> 'Seres' is the Latin word for China/East Asia.
> 
> It's entirely possible for Chinese people to have been in Rome in the first century AD. Around this time, in fact, there were a few attempts at sending ambassadors between the two empires, and trade routes definitely extended between the two.
> 
> I don't know anything about the workings of a civilian doctor's business in ancient Rome; in fact, I'm not entirely certain how much we _can_ know about these things. Therefore, everything about Seia's shop is entirely made of educated guesses and speculation. Sorry about that.
> 
> The via Cuprius was, in fact, an ancient street which ran to the subura over the Esquiline; but I've done enough shifting and shoving that it's probably more of an adopted name in the fic than an accurate usage.


End file.
